November’s presidential election is still almost seven months away, but Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has already notched his state for former President Donald Trump.
The Republican governor told Fox News on Sunday that the Sunshine State is no longer a swing state after swinging vastly to the right during his time in office, as The Epoch Times reported.
DeSantis told Fox News Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo that since his first election in 2018, the registered voter tally in Florida has gone from a Republican deficit of about 300,000 voters to a positive margin of nearly 900,000.
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“You’re talking about a million-plus voter registration shift,” DeSantis said.
“Florida is off the board. It is a Republican state,” DeSantis said. “We used to be a one-point state, every election hung on how would Florida go; that is not true anymore. And I think that’s a good thing for the party.”
State voter registration data show that many voters are willing to become almost anything except a Democrat.
When DeSantis ran in 2018, according to state numbers, Florida contained 4.72 million Republicans, 4.96 million Democrats, 3.59 million people who did not identify with any political party, and roughly 113,000 members of minor political parties.
As of February, Florida now has 5.22 million Republicans, a surge of 500,000 new GOPers.
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Minor parties have also witnessed major growth, increasing collectively by almost 220,000 voters.
The independents have remained somewhat stable, with a slight decline of about 52,000 voters. The Democrats, meanwhile, have dropped by 616,000 voters.
Republicans now outnumber Democrats in 56 of 57 counties. DeSantis won all but five counties in his 2022 re-election campaign.
“I do think that migration has skewed among people who come to Florida, not because they want to change the policies to reflect in Illinois, or California or New York, but because they appreciate how Florida has done it differently from where they’re coming,” DeSantis said in the interview.
President Joe Biden’s campaign recently claimed Florida was winnable. That may be so much whistling past the graveyard.
Trump won Florida in 2016 with 49% of the vote. He increased that to 51% when running against Biden in 2020.
Two separate polls taken last month, the most recent ones available, show that Trump’s lead over Biden in Florida is now six points and seven points, respectively.
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